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The Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) is Australian Commonwealth freedom of information (FOI) legislation which gives members of the public rights of access to official documents of the Government of the Commonwealth and of its agencies.

Outline of the Act
Members of the public have certain rights of access. These include the right to access documents about the operation of government departments and documents that are in the possession of government Ministers or agencies. Certain documents are exempt from this, including (but not limited to) documents that could damage national security, defence or international relations, or any document that could damage Commonwealth-State relations.

Requesting Information
The request for access to a document must be in writing, and contain a sufficient amount of information about the requested document in order for it to be easier to locate. The application process can also incur charges. The government agency or Minister who receives the application must inform the applicant that their request has been received within 14 working days, and must also notify the applicant of their decision in relation to the request within 30 working days.

History of the FOI Act
Before the FOI act of 1982 the various governments of Australia had no obligation to release information to the public, because the traditional Westminster system of governance is fairly closed to public scrutiny. Between the 1960s and 1980s a number of enquiries were made, looking into the transparency of the Australian government and public services which lead to New Industry Law (NAL) reforms. One of the NAL initiatives was Freedom of Information and is considered a "landmark in the development of Australian democracy".

Update to legislation
In 2010, the Australian Parliament implemented wide-ranging open government reforms — the most significant FOI reforms in thirty years. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner was established and substantial changes were made to the FOI Act. These reforms simplified the process for accessing government information, tightened the exemptions to information release, strengthened independent oversight and review of FOI administration, promoted proactive publication of government information, and clearly stated the open government object of the FOI Act. The object of the Act is 'to increase recognition that information held by the Government is to be managed for public purposes, and is a national resource'. The Reform Act introduced a new scheme for the proactive publication of government information called the Information Publication Scheme, under which government agencies are required to provide certain operational information on their websites.

Some of the changes for applications received on or after 1 November 2010 include:
 * no application fee is payable for an FOI request or application for internal review
 * an applicant who seeks access to their own personal information does not pay any charges
 * for all other applications, the first five hours of decision-making time is free of charge.